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She tells me not to worry about Chet. She says the good news is that his organs will be up for grabs, and maybe we’ll meet up again, under different circumstances. She says donors’ families often do that. She says his organs will be worth a lot. Just think, she tells me jubilantly, someone out there will have his eyes, his heart. Imagine if the two of you fell in love. How romantic would that be?
She says maybe I’ll get lucky and find a man with Ethan’s bones and Chet’s skin, and that anything is possible. And even though I like the idea of Ethan’s eyes and his heart and his skin being in and on someone else’s body—even though I like the thought of him and Chet all mixed together so I get the best parts of both of them—I can’t help but wonder where that leaves her. Is it really possible to have it all?
I close my eyes and think about it for a long time. When I open them again, it’s like I am seeing things clearly for the first time and I know what I have to do. I know my angle.
She tells me she’s sorry she’s been so dreadful about everything. She was afraid she might lose me.
Just get better, Sadie, she says, and I want to. I really, really do.
Our game depends on it.
After all, every love affair has its rituals—and you always kill what you love in the end.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
HER
Accidental shocks are a very common thing. Particularly for an electrician. He was a lucky bastard. I wanted his death to be a little more instantaneous and a little less how do you say? Leave-it-to-chance? Suspicious?
Which is why he has to go out on a high note in life. Before the ravages of time and age make him more unappealing. While he is still young and virile enough to bang multiple women at one time.
Yes, I’m aware he fucked my wife.
Ann has her roundabout ways of making things happen, you see.
He had the wind at his back and the sun on his face. Or rather in his face. His car radio was blaring Stevie Ray as he rounded the corner at sixty miles an hour. By the time he spotted the deer, he had less than a millisecond to respond. Obviously, he chose poorly. Which wasn’t surprising, given the choices he made in life. It was unlucky for him, his split- second decision both to avoid the deer and also fuck my wife. How could Sadie ever trust him after that, Ann wanted to know?
Not—how could I ever trust her.
And I certainly can’t trust her.
But that doesn’t stop me from loving her. Sex is sex. It’s fairly mechanical, fairly short. Around eleven minutes on average. Ann and I have history. Real history. We made a commitment. Till death do us part. I intend to see it out. Which is why this fellow had to die. Loose ends are dangerous in surgery, and they are dangerous in a marriage.
Sadly, it wasn’t even a real deer he swerved to avoid. Just a decoy, the kind hunters use to lure their prey. Although, by the time he realized that, if he had at all, he’d already hit the tree head on.
He didn’t die on impact. Unfortunately. His truck was old, and without airbags, and still he held on. It’s too bad he had an affinity for country roads and women who were off limits. The fast life, they call it. If only it hadn’t taken someone so long to stop for help. If only the fire department hadn’t had to work so hard to get him out. If only. If only. If only. If only, he might have lived.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SADIE
I didn’t see Ann run Chet off the road. But I am not surprised. Ann always has preferred her endings tidy and neat.
As she wheels me through the hospital doors, she tells me it’s done. She says Chet is in the morgue downstairs, and it’s almost pleasant to think of us in the same place once again.
She pushes me out into the courtyard; it’s the perfect summer evening. As often as she can, considering her busy schedule, she comes to make sure I get to see the sunset. It’s important, she says. Endings are often new beginnings in disguise.
She sets the brake on my wheelchair, and finally I get a good look at her. She looks radiant, as I expected she would, having just come from a book signing. Taking her in, I get that familiar pang deep down in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes you sense you are holding onto something meant to be let go. I get that sense now, but I’m careful to push the thought away just as soon as it comes.
Ann says it was like that with Ethan. She said I held on too long and it very nearly ruined me. Other times, she says, like with us, when you’ve found something spectacular, you find you can’t let go. Sometimes if you’ve held something precious in your hands, in your heart, in your life—in all the places that count—you make sure you hold on tight. You do it because you know. You know what you have is so far beyond your wildest dreams that it would be nearly impossible to take anything less ever again. And what a shame it would be if you were made to; after all, the world can be a very mediocre place.
She has a point. Before Ann moved to Penny Lane, I was asleep. I was awake. But asleep. I was sleepwalking through life. But now I am awake, and now I can’t stay angry, not so long as there’s still so much to do. Not so long as the sun rises and it sets. Not so long as the future still holds so much promise. Not so long as I still have a shot at making things right.
And maybe it’s crazy to think, but even if I could go back in time and know this was how it ended, I’d do it all again. I’ve been thinking a lot and I think that I could be the kind of stand-in parent Neil and Amelia need. I think motherhood could give me purpose. Sure, I hate teenagers. But I suppose I could get over that. I’ve already gotten over so much.
The doctors say I’m progressing well in therapy. A full recovery probably isn’t a reality for me, but with the right therapies, I may be able to live on my own again. Ann says not to listen to them. She says doctors don’t know everything. As usual, she says nothing is impossible.
The book signing was amazing, she tells me. Sold out, with a line out the door and around the corner. I smile in the only way I can these days: half-lipped and half-hearted.
